Page 31 of 468 CHAPTER VII--OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR - Sketches by Boz

A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn. The boy worked steadily on; dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to complaint or murmur.

One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our customary visit to the invalid. His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open window, gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading the Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered, and advanced to meet us.

'I was telling William,' she said, 'that we must manage to take him into the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well. He is not ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much lately.' Poor thing! The tears that streamed through her fingers, as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow's cap, too plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself.

We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing, for we saw the breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form before us. At every respiration, his heart beat more slowly.

The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her cheek. There was a pause. He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked long and earnestly in his mother's face.

'William, William!' murmured the mother, after a long interval, 'don't look at me so--speak to me, dear!'

The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his features resolved into the same cold, solemn gaze.

'William, dear William! rouse yourself; don't look at me so, love-- pray don't! Oh, my God! what shall I do!' cried the widow, clasping her hands in agony--'my dear boy! he is dying!' The boy raised himself by a violent effort, and folded his hands together-- 'Mother! dear, dear mother, bury me in the open fields--anywhere but in these dreadful streets. I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in these close crowded streets; they have killed me; kiss me again, mother; put your arm round my neck--'

He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his features; not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and muscle.

The boy was dead.

SCENES

		"It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." William Somerset Maugham

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